“One Lego Huish Park, please”
A £5,000 Lego loan is keeping Brickstand founder Chris Smith locked away building your favourite football stadium – just don’t let his missus find out
It’s hard to believe, but spending every spare minute making Lego football stadiums doesn’t always lead to a happy home life.
“I started out on the kitchen table,” Chris Smith, the devoted brickitect in question, tells FFT. “But I got kicked off as my girlfriend was fed up of eating her dinner between them.”
Smith has now got a “little studio”, and with the brick/life balance back in order, things are building nicely for his company, Brickstand, with customers eager to own their favourite ground.
The career move kicked off in 2014 when the Altrincham-based Crystal Palace fan saw some Lego US stadia on his travels, but struggled to track down any British equivalents.
“I just thought, ‘I’ll have a go myself then’,” he says. “So I approached the start-up loans office, gained £5,000 to spend on Lego, and started accepting commissions from people.” Hang on, they loaned him £5,000? To buy Lego? “I was quite lucky because the bloke was a Blackpool fan, so he was really into the project straight away.”
A chance meeting the previous day helped swing it. Smith took some trial stadiums along to a street market in Altrincham – and who should wander past, then tweet about them, but BBC sports editor Dan Roan. Handy. “It gave it some validation,” says Smith.
Smith’s plan was to do all 92 league clubs. “I’ve done 40, but some multiple times,” he admits, owing to a few clubs being more popular. The models sell for £250-£300 and take “a couple of days, but often longer,” explains their creator, “if I’m waiting for special bricks.” Some iconic British grounds are already in the bag – like Hampden, Wembley and Villa Park – but maybe most impressive of all is Preston’s Deepdale with its distinctive seat murals. “I have to get those bricks specially printed,” Smith reveals.
He is now starting to assemble quite the following across Europe, but travel carries risks. “I had a disaster trying to take one to Norway for TV: it completely fell to bits on the plane,” he says. “I had to rebuild it for live morning TV and was panicking, but did it just in time.”
Still, things can get a little hairy when he delivers them home as well.
“If the girlfriend gets back when I’m bringing one in, she’ll ask: ‘And where’s that going to go?’ I just scarper.”
Oh he’s bricking it, no doubt...